Everything is connected

Last Sunday I spent the morning doing dishes and a few other chores around the house. Then I took some time to talk to my kids. I told them about an experience I had years ago that involved some very wise counsel. My husband and I were looking at how we could become more financially savvy. Well the person that we were talking to recommended a book (that I consequently read and have loved ever since). The book is The Four Laws of Debt Free Prosperity. It has since been renamed The Four Laws of Financial Prosperity, but I actually love the original name better. However that is not the point. He also counseled us to keep our home clean and organized as well as our office space (mostly talking about my husbands work spaces) for at least one month. . Well we read and loved the book but struggled to keep our spaces clean and organized for any length of time, let alone the suggested month. So fast forward many years and now I am cleaning my home on Sunday morning. I sat my kids down and told them about the challenge we had been issued years earlier. I also told them that we had never managed to accomplish the second half of the challenge and that we were not doing very well to be cleaning our home on Sunday morning when we should be doing all we can to show reverence and respect to the Lord's Day and not be doing chores and the like. We determined as a family to do better and to try to take the next month to accomplish the second half of the challenge to keep our home clean. I truly believe that everything is connected and that was the point of the challenge. If we cannot keep our lives in order and balance in one area it spills over into the other areas. We are only one week into our challenge and the first few days were spent cleaning up the house but this Saturday before bed we cleaned the house in preparation for Sunday and we will only have to pick up after ourselves tomorrow. This week we won't be cleaning up Saturday's messes on Sunday.

While we are working on getting out of debt as a family I truly believe that we also have to work on other areas of our lives if we really wish to be successful.

Everything is Connected

Just Keep Swimming

Dori has great advice in the movie Finding Nemo. When things seem extremely difficult, just keep going. There is so very little that I can do about our financial situation. My husband is still looking for a job, and in the meantime he is working at a summer camp full time which gives us a small income but prevents him from looking for a full time job for after camp. However, I find great comfort in the small steps I can take to help our situation, and today we made progress in two areas.

First,  we managed to plant a rhubarb plant which I hope will some day give my kids the option to just walk outside and pluck off a stem for a treat once in a while. We also planted some mint that I am sure we will be using for years to come (if it can survive the bad weather and the animals), and we planted fennel and dill to feed to the goats. Those also won't be ready for use for some time, but we are planning for long term and not just for immediate survival.

Second, I also managed to turn some blueberries that were given to us into some jam to add to our food storage.

As we work towards our debt free goals it is important that we plan not only for the short term successes, but also for the long term successes.

I don't just want to have goats that we can get milk from, but I want to have plants growing on my property that the goats can eat for food and their health. I want to use our property in such a way that we can live off it and not just live on it. Today someone said that patience in the key and remarked that patience enables us to go from cabin to castle. I loved that comment. Although I don't ever really want to live in a castle I am sure that my cabin will begin to feel like a castle as I patiently and prayerfully plan out and work on our property.  I hope that someday our property won't just be a blessing our us but to others as well.

What do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?

One of my goals is to fill all of the empty jars that I have with food. Another one of my goals is to work on my food storage.   It was exciting to be able to work on both of those goals today. 

We spent the day canning. Actually if you count how many jars of food we added to our food storage it doesn't look like we were that productive, but I know that those few jars amount to hours of work. I am excited about the food that we added to our storage even if it isn't a whole lot.

We added 5 quarts of apple pie filling (it would be more except that we don't have any more ultra gel). We then cooked a batch of apple curry chutney and a batch of sweet pickle relish. We use a lot of homemade relish as a family, so I try to make some at least twice a year. I was sad that I only got 2 pints and 2 half pints made up today, but I was glad to put more on the shelf for the family to eat. One of the exciting things about today was that it was the first time I made chutney. It is exciting when I made something new. I have never actually had chutney before, but my husband says that he likes it, and I had some apples, so I made him some apple chutney. 

Update On Goats

After longer refrigeration the goat milk no longer tastes like powdered milk and just tastes delicious. Love the goats. I hope to breed one of the goats this fall so that we can increase our heard size.
LOL, that is funny I don't know how 3 goats is a heard, but I hope that soon we will have a lot more goats.

Goats

We finally got our goats. We got two milkers and we are learning the how to milk them. I was told that their milk would taste good. Well honestly, it tastes just like powdered milk to me so I don't know how that will work for some of the more picky milk drinkers in the family. However, a lot of my kids have grown up with powdered milk, and one of my kids actually loves it so for him (who actually loves to drink a lot of milk) this will be a big win. I have decided that since these are my goats, I am just going to learn to love their milk, and I will have to adjust to the difference in taste. I am sure given time it will happen; besides, we have had a lot of bad cows milk from the store over the years, and so I am willing to work with my beautiful new goats. We have a lot to do here on our homestead still, but we are a lot closer to being more self-reliant all the time.

There are a lot of little things that we need to get to properly take care of our goats, and we will slowly get all those things taken care of.

It feels good to be another step closer to our homesteading goals. 

Friends

Today I was reminded by two very dear friends that I am not in this alone. I know that I have a wonderful family who is always there to support me, and I KNOW that I have a loving Heavenly Father who is also there to support me, but it was nice to be reminded that I have some wonderful friends who are there cheering me on and doing all they can to help me. I am so very grateful for my friends. 

Thank you Sarah and Julie!

My Garden

Seeds vs Starts & Perennials vs Annuals

I really want to have a beautiful productive garden. There are so many wonderful things about having a garden that are amazing. To begin with you can grow the food you eat instead of relying money to purchase your food. In my efforts to become ever more self-reliant I am trying to make my homestead as productive as possible. However I have to admit I do not have a very green thumb, in fact I rather think that my thumb tends towards black far too often. For this reason, I like to use starts instead of seeds. Last year we grew a whole tray of seeds and when we moved, in one night, they were all dead from extreme weather. I really should try again, but it is so nice to walk down to the store and purchase a handful of plants that are already months into their growth. However for a self-reliant approach I need to learn to not only successfully grow from seeds, but I need to learn to harvest my own seeds for the next season.

Second, I want to grow as many things in my garden as I can that are Perennials so that I don't have to repurchase plants and every year they can continue to contribute to our food supply. For this reason I want to plant things like rhubarb, berries (in all their varieties), trees that produce food (fruits and nuts), and edible flowers and plants that are perennials.
I have always thought of dandelions as weeds, but here where I don't have any grass, I would like to see dandelions growing so that I can harvest their leaves for salads and use the for medicinal uses. I have so much that I would like to do and I have a very limited budget so for this reason also I need to carefully purchase plants that will be the best use for our property.

 So far the only perennial that I have in my garden is cumfrey. I hope that by the end of this season I will have my rhubarb planted along with some bushes (perhaps currants and gooseberries).

Also we will be getting goats soon and I need to make sure that I don't plant my garden in such a way that one day of the goats out and all of my hard work is eaten away.
 

Cloth Diapers

We recently switched to cloth diapers to save money. I am super grateful to a friend of mine who was able to give me some cloth diapers to add to the ones that I already had to make it so that I could switch to cloth diapers without an additional expense. I think that one of the reasons that it doesn't bother me to use (wash and take car of) cloth diapers is because every time I use them I am reminded that I didn't have to spend any money to use them. Of course I do have to pay for the laundry soap, but I have to wash other clothes anyways so that is a given expense. I hope to continue to find ways to cut and eliminate expenses here on our homestead.

Determined to get out of debt!!!

An article caught my eye and I just had to read it. The article was titled, "The Top 5 reasons why your broke." I laughed and thought, okay, why do you think I am broke?  Apparently 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. 55% of women and 45% of men do not have at least 3 months worth of emergency savings. In addition to this sad reality these are the answers they gave for why I (and many other people) am broke.
Their answer:
1. Employment and earnings
2. Prices
3. Lifestyle and overspending - 52% of Americans spend more than they earn. Yikes!!!
4. Student Loans
5. Credit and Debt
Okay at this point I have to admit that they got me on 2 of these, but we are improving and moving in a good direction.
Don't despair! All of us can get out of debt and create an emergency savings! I haven't given up and neither should you!

A friend of mine told me the following story. I don't actually know the person involved but it could be anyone really. She said a family determined that they would get out of debt and live debt free. They made radical decisions including hanging their clothes on a clothesline to save on their power bill. (Not such a radical decision for me because we do that). Anyways their neighbors observed their new standard of living and began leaving bags of clothes on their doorstep and giving them other charity because they were worried about how poor they must be if they had to live that way. When the given time came for the family to move they paid for their new home with cash. My friend noted that it is very likely that many of the people who were giving the donations were probably still in debt and feeling sorry for the family unaware of how the sacrifices made by the family gave them the opportunity to be debt free and living out of bondage. 

So feel free to join me on my debt free roller coaster as our family works as hard as we can to become debt free.